Attribution Embarrassment

Updated March 12, 1999 12:01 a.m. ET

In the no good deed goes unpunished department, yesterday we went out of our way to compliment our competitors at The New York Times for their stories on security breaches giving secret information on nuclear warhead design to China. On the basic story of the theft, we should instead have credited Carla Anne Robbins of our own Washington bureau, who was able to report back in January that it was the biggest coup in China's 20-year espionage effort, and that the top suspect was a scientist who had been removed from any sensitive projects. Now the Times is upping the ante with the charge that the Clinton Administration...